In this story, it explains the poverty level and growth of certain areas including the southern Bronx and Washington heights and Harlem. These few places are some of the poorest districts in the United States today. In the beginning a boy named Cliffie is going for a walk with a Reverend through some of the worse blocks of the city. He first brings him to a waste incinerator, which burns red- bag products such as amputated limbs, bedding, bandages and syringes that are transported from New York City hospitals. He also brings him by local soup shops, where homeless men and women go to get some food, and a fenced in lot where the police bring impounded cars. On the ground while they were walking were some bright colored caps of crack containers and hypodermic needles. Just to walk around and see all the things that people see every single day should be traumatizing for Cliffie. At the end of the walk the reverend says " Everyone is going to be burned to crispy cookies" I believe that this means that there are pockets of hell in our cities, and although an entire sector of America is condemned to burn in them, we insist on looking the other way and eventually it is all going to come back at us. All throughout this story, it tells all the problems that go around, including violence, diseases, drugs and other things. They say that the family structure breaks down because of the surroundings of their physical society. If all the poverty is in a few particular areas with violence, gangs drugs and diseases going around, and children keep growing up in those particular areas with high population, then the poverty level is going to grow. Because the younger children are growing up in these low poverty cities, they are going to grow up thinking about and doing things which have already surrounded them. A lot of people are saying that you grow up by learning, or behaviorism, from that which is going around you and if that's true then this story is true.
